How to Empower Your Employees

Empowerment for your employees involves delegating responsibility with authority. When you empower an employee, you give him or her, the responsibility to make decisions about a project and decide how the project is done.

If you want to truly empower your employees, you need to give them the freedom to do their jobs. By delegating responsibility and authority, you show your team members that you trust them and you give them an opportunity to develop new skills. You can’t just delegate projects to your employees and then tell them that they’re on their own. You must provide them with the necessary information to do the job.

Here are some other empowerment tips:

Match the project with the person. Make sure that the person you choose for a project has the skills to do the job. If the individual doesn’t have the skills, then give him or her the necessary training.

Give 100-percent responsibility. Each project should have a task owner who's entirely responsible for the result — and everything along the way.

Explain the big picture. Your employee needs as much information as you have to give.

Tell all. You also need to tell your employee all you can about the project. You want your employee to make informed decisions.

Offer other resources. If you can’t answer some questions or don’t know certain information, then direct your employee to the individuals who can help.

Don’t be a dictator. You and your employee are a team. Together, you should come up with ideas for the project. The project itself, not you, should govern how the project is run.

Set a deadline and check in periodically for status reports. You don’t need to micromanage the person, but you do need to be aware of what’s going on.

Give your employees decision-making power. The more input the person feels he or she has in the project, the more invested he or she is and the better the results are.